Peter Kim exhibits at the Imane Farès gallery 04.02.19 Patrice Huchet

#PARIS For his first solo exhibition in Paris “SEA OF HUMANITY”, Peter Kim presents a large sample of his artistic practice with paintings, numerous sketches he draws every day, sculptures, or even in video and offers us to navigate between dream and reality.

It was in Marseille, a port on the Mediterranean and a city of migration, that his first revelation was born, the infernal vision of the fleeing peoples. The preponderance of the sea, the people who cross it, and travel there. Leaving his academic teaching in Korea, Peter Kim’s painting became more abstract, but above all serial. Peter Kim paints not only people but also the passage of time, the passage between two spaces, the passage as an allegory.

In Kim’s work, water is an important symbol. As a vector of passage, as an element of freedom, nothing stops her, as a symbol of life and fraternity, eighty percent of water constitutes man. It is a symbol of equality as an essential resource for the survival of humanity. It represents the harmony between nature and humanity. Despite its idealization, water is nevertheless an object of misfortune, it can be unleashed, sweep everything away. Calm waters mix with menacing waters on which men sail, motionless, filling the entire space of the Imane Farès gallery.

What strikes us immediately is the graphic bias; man appears similar to the wave, water and humans merge, water makes it possible to make the link between several universes while erasing limits and landmarks. The human forms that appear seem naked, all merge together. Is this a passage that is represented? Is it the landing of refugees or migrants? Is it a scene of fishing, harvesting algae on land? Is it a ritual, a baptism, a purification…? Symbols of terrestrial or spiritual foods.

There is a fine line between tranquility and tragedy. Migrants whose journey is forced and voluntary, imbued with dreams of freedom and tranquility, fantasized and certainly also feared, must touch us and challenge us, touch us in our condition as citizens.

The exhibition also presents a series of sculptures. Combining containers, assembled containers and covered with a band, as if swaddled, they suddenly take on the appearance of abstract sculptures The bowl is hyper represented throughout the exhibition. But is it a bowl? Not only that. Peter Kim gives a deeper meaning to his bowls:”The bowl allows everyone to reflect on themselves.”The artist is also a writer, his book, “My Fight”, denounces the technicality of the world destroying humans. Modern society is the world of the individual for himself, there are no longer any relationships between people. The artist takes us into his world where the dream is permanent

The exhibition continues with a series of drawings. He essentially works on the line and point in a repetitive way, without aiming at the effectiveness of the first perception. On the contrary, it tends to reveal what time, memories, memory and contemplation can offer. In the paintings presented in the exhibition, the lines intertwine to form a dense mass resulting in a container shape that appears to float in the middle of nowhere In the basement of the gallery, a film in the form of a triptych is very reminiscent of the work of Turkish artist Ali Kazma.

Peter Kim aspires to create an aesthetic that is more discreet than water would purify and that reflects the artist’s desire to navigate between two antagonistic cultures with a work that constantly navigates between dream and reality.

Patrice Huchet

Passionate since his childhood about all forms of artistic expression, he began his career in the world of tourism where he practiced travel photography. He then joined a photo agency where he held marketing/communication positions for more than 15 years. He organizes some exhibitions and creates from 2009 a quarterly magazine reCreation.
In 2015, he became a consultant in communication through art and brand content, offering artistic events and editorial or artistic content.

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